Today Claire came home from work and we sat at the table for awhile. Oh boy, if my dining room table could talk......there are more memories soaked into this table that I can recount, and more tears and bursts of laughter than I can ever remember. There are more lists and memos and plans etched into it that I could ever save...... She is making her lists for moving to college. It's true that she is only moving a couple hundred feet away to the college in our town, but she is still moving out. She is taking all of the things she uses every day and she is setting up a life in a dorm on a college campus with a new roommate and a whole new world. In 4 days we will move her out. It is so weird. It is the weirdest thing ever. Adding children to our home is not weird at all. Figuring out how to send them out is. I'm less sad and more....conflicted, maybe. I am so excited for her. Moving to college is probab...
My young friend that I once called "extra kredit" lives elsewhere now. I spent some time with the family that have said yes to him last week and we talked about all of the things....because I understand things that are harder to say to most folks. This family needed a safe space to say the things and to ask the questions and because of all of the generosity in the world, I had some answers. It was good for me to be with them because it reminds me again to be on my knees in prayer for them, and for him....what was hard for me is still hard for them and for him even though it no longer is my hard. I got to deliver Christmas presents to them for him because a generous group chose to bless local kids in foster placement for the Holidays. She let me choose the gifts because I had known him longer that she had at the time of the inquiry. When I talk with her and visit her and pray for her and text her I want to hug her every single time but even...
32 years and a few days ago, my uncle Todd had a car accident. It was just days after his wedding and my last memory, before the accident, was dancing with him at his wedding. I was one of the bridesmaids, just 17 years old....and though he was "uncle" he was more like big brother, just 5 years older than me. In the accident, he was thrown from his car and paralyzed from the neck down. He has spent 32 years in a wheelchair. This week, he has been planning a trip. It is a very important trip. It is his trip.....home. To Jesus. The paralysis first took his legs and years later, his arms, then his ability to eat and later, to breathe without a ventilator and trach. In spite of every loss, his love for life and for relationships was strong. He wanted to live and to enjoy the sunshine, and his wife, and their life together......until recently when it became clear that he wasn't really living anymore but mostly dying. His lu...
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